Patsy Hely’s ceramics, painted with soft-hued pigments, address in her gentle observational style the trees, animals and people who populate everyday life in Canberra and on her travels. The ceramic bodies of these works are understated and practical, whilst carrying with them the charm of deliberate imperfection; a deft control gives way to warbling edges suited to the subjects, the trees and birds, which they gather. She works confidently in a style attuned to the forms of memory, for example, through her use white space and underglazes which, in places, thin to white, suggesting both the suffusion of scenes by light and the fading of an already faded negative. Natural scenes predominate, with a layering of tree branches, which dance and bend, so that through their forms are seen hints of the pale blue of sky, or the soft browns of soil, or the pastel greens of underbrush.
Hely has exhibited and taught widely since her training at the National Art School in the late 1970s. In 2007, she completed her PhD, Ceramics and the Articulation of Place, at The Australian National University while working as an academic from 1988 to 2014. Hely’s works are held in all major public collections across Australia, and internationally in institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Musée royal de Mariemont.
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Patsy Hely, Was that a Willy Wagtail?, 2021, Porcelain and ceramic pigments, 39 x 13.8 x 13.8 cm
